Entertainment

Are We Walking a Fine Line with All This Openness?

If there is one thing that can be said for the Web 2.0 movement and social media it is that its proponents are strong believers in openness and transparency. They are such strong believers that they have no problems leaving things like their cell phone numbers on their blogs, their addresses on their blog about pages or their complete traveling itinerary viewable by all on sites like Dopplr.

Back in September of 2007 I wrote a post on my own blog titled Who needs Carnivore when you have lifestreams. The idea was that there was no real need for any secret government data mining project since we all seemed to be so willing to give away our information for nothing.

This idea of online security has been going on for almost as long as two people could talk to each other over the Internet. With Web 2.0, social networking and social media there came the idea that security online was non-existent and the sooner we got used to that fact the better off we would be. I have never been a fully fledged proponent of this transparency idea to the degree that some seem to be. For me, I still believe that some modicum of personal information security is needed, despite having relaxed over the years from my original feelings on the matter.

For me, security and the protection of my personal data on the Web is extremely important and it is something I don’t believe that those involved with Web 2.0 or any social media service take seriously enough. Even today Chris Miller here on Mashable wrote about the idea of Social Network Identity theft and how users; unless you are someone like Robert Scoble, don’t have any rights should they find that someone has stolen their identity on some new social network.

Smaller social networking companies seem to be more open to step in the middle and assist in clearing up someone purporting themselves as you. However, who is to say there cannot be two people of the same name at a company? Who wins in that regard? First come first served? Why would any site wish to step in the middle, when deleting accounts or editing information holds them more liable in many people’s eyes. Larger companies, such as Google, MySpace, Twitter and Facebook seem to stay far away from the matter. You are hard pressed to find a statement or help item on the subject, much less who to contact when you are the victim.

However, as minor as this idea of social media identity theft might seem, it's really on the tip of a potentially huge iceberg of danger that could face us as we open up more about ourselves on the Web. This was made abundantly clear in an excellent article today by Alexander van Elsas as he looked at both a popular Web service for travelers and a technology that is becoming commonplace in vehicles these days.

The first he talked about was Dopplr which is a social network that lets you enter in your travel plans primarily as private for friends and families. The person he used in his example was Robert Scoble and the fact that there are still a lot of details about his travel plans that are made available as you can see here. While this might seem slightly innocuous on the service Alexander quite rightly points out that this provides anyone in the mood for committing burglary the perfect time table and place to do the crime.

As far as the second idea, it requires nothing more than a nice expensive vehicle with built-in GPS being parked on the extended stay section of just about any airport. Something like this isn’t as far fetched as one might think as Alexander provides a true event where this happened

It turns out that car thieves in the Netherlands had found a very lucrative thieving method. They would go to the long parking area of our national airport and steal expensive cars with integrated car navigation systems. Then they would choose the “home” address on the navigation system and drive to the house of the unaware owners that were obviously on vacation. As a result, not only their expensive car was stolen, but their house was conveniently emptied too.

I have always maintained that no matter how good the intentions of people might be when they set about to change the world with all these cool social media services those services will get misused. While we might like to believe that all this openness and transparency might be a good thing for other people it is like being handed a shopping list. The problem is they are like us and they will more than willingly exploit any weakness available to their own end.

Mashable
is a global, multi-platform media and entertainment company. Powered by its own proprietary technology, Mashable is the go-to source for tech, digital culture and entertainment content for its dedicated and influential audience around the globe.